Why You Ought to Add Baking Soda to Onions When Cooking

My household is massive on Kenji’s channa masala. With staple substances like canned chickpeas and tomatoes, ginger, garlic, and some primary spices, it doesn’t take lengthy to place collectively, so it’s a simple solution to get a flavorful dinner on the desk, particularly on a weeknight. And whereas it’s a brilliant easy recipe, the dish isn’t good except I make it—or so my household says—so I’m tasked with channa masala-ing at the very least as soon as a month. The fantastic thing about this month-to-month ritual is that I’ve zeroed in on one approach that actually cuts down on cooking time: including baking soda to hurry up the method of browning onions. It’s such an impactful tip that I’ve began utilizing it in different dishes, and it saves me about 5 to 10 minutes, reducing the onion cooking time nearly in half. Right here’s how. 

What Occurs When You Add Baking Soda to Onions

PH has a huge impact on the Maillard reaction, a chemical course of that encourages browning in meals when they’re heated. The upper the pH, the sooner the response happens. Onions are solely at a pH degree of round 5 out of 14, making them a extra acidic ingredient, however an alkaline ingredient like baking soda can enhance the pH degree of onions, encouraging browning in a shorter period of time. 

Baking soda additionally softens onions; its excessive pH degree, which ranges from 8.3 to 9, weakens the pectins within the greens, inflicting their cell partitions to interrupt down. The sooner the onions break down, the sooner chemical substances are launched, which implies not solely sooner cooking, but additionally sooner taste and coloration growth. 

Learn how to Add Baking Soda to Your Onions to Velocity Browning

Incorporating baking soda into your recipes to hurry up onion browning is easy. Warmth oil in a skillet or no matter vessel you propose to cook dinner the onions in, then add your chopped, sliced, or diced onions, adopted instantly by the baking soda. You’ll wish to use about 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda per one pound of onions. Make sure that the baking soda is evenly included with the onions, then permit the onions to cook dinner till starting to brown, stirring often. As soon as the onions begin to go away a brown coating on the pan, add one tablespoon of water and scrape up all of the brown bits. Repeat this course of till the onions are a deep brown coloration. The entire course of ought to take about 10 minutes for diced onions cooked over medium-high warmth, however you will want to regulate the time based mostly on how finely the onions are minimize.

When You Ought to—and Should not—Add Baking Soda to Onions

Whereas this system is nice for shortly browning your onions, there are a number of caveats. The best way the baking soda breaks down the onion leads to it shedding lots of its form and taking up a softer, nearly mushy texture. For a dish like channa masala or butter chicken the place the onions are supposed to mix in with the sauce, that’s not an issue—you wouldn’t need crunchy onions studded all through dishes like these anyway. However if you need your onions to retain their construction in a recipe like French onion soup or Oklahoma-style onion burgers, you’ll wish to skip this system solely, in any other case you’ll find yourself with gloopy onions all through your dish. And whereas this tip does velocity up browning time, it nonetheless takes about 10 minutes, which is why Swetha Sivakumar skips onions solely in her 10-minute chana masala recipe. 

Baking soda additionally prevents onions from turning into too candy, which, once more, is warranted in sure dishes. However this hack received’t assist in recipes that depend on the sweet, caramelized flavor of onions. Given the generally soapy notes that baking soda may give off, you’ll wish to be certain the dish you’re utilizing it in has sufficient flavors to masks that. 

It’s additionally essential to notice that whereas this system works with white, yellow, and pink onions, the baking soda does give pink onions a bluish-green coloration that, in my expertise and opinion, isn’t very interesting. However as soon as the onions are included with different substances to type a sauce, the colour isn’t sometimes noticeable. 

The Takeaway

Including baking soda if you’re cooking onions is a good way to hurry up the browning course of. Nevertheless, this system works greatest in recipes that don’t depend on (1) onions retaining their construction or (2) the candy taste of onions. However when you’re like me and wish (or, actually, are pressured) to whip up a channa masala each month, baking soda is simply what it is advisable to save on time.